X-RAY · 17 SEPTEMBER 2026
Amazon, Walmart, eBay, ESPN, Weather.com and Yahoo: how much tracking each front page loads
Six US websites everybody uses, opened one by one in a freshly installed Chrome, 20 seconds each, with GUARDIANA recording every name the front page made the machine ask for. How many advertising, tracking and telemetry names each one loads.
How to read this. GUARDIANA writes down every name the machine asks to resolve (DNS). It sees names, not content. Each site was opened alone, in a clean browser with no account, and measured from the inside; what is counted is the names its page asked for.
Scoreboard
How many advertising, tracking and telemetry names each site loads in 20 seconds of its front page, out of the 200 distinct ones seen across the whole test.
| Site | Advertising, tracking and telemetry | Its own domains | Distinct names in total | Loads the least |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon | 29 | 8 | 51 | |
| Walmart | not measurable on equal terms (see its section) | — | ||
| eBay | 17 | 12 | 41 | |
| ESPN | 84 | 19 | 136 | |
| Weather.com | 15 | 4 | 31 | yes |
| Yahoo | 146 | 17 | 243 | |
In this test the one loading the least tracking was Weather.com (15 names against 146 for the one loading most). It is a result of these front pages on this day, not a general verdict.
What it says
The shop and weather front pages load far less than the news ones: Amazon 29 advertising and tracking names, eBay 17 and Weather.com 15, almost all of them Amazon and Google ad networks and identity synchronisers. ESPN (84) and Yahoo (146) look like a newspaper. Yahoo is also an ad network itself: several of the tracking names the other sites load are Yahoo's (analytics.yahoo.com, pbs.yahoo.com), and on its own front page those count as its own. Walmart could not be measured: to an externally driven browser it shows a "robot or human?" check instead of the shop.
Amazon
amazon-adsystem.com is Amazon's ad network; here it counts as advertising, not as an own domain, because the open lists classify it that way and it also appears on other companies' sites.
Walmart
Not comparable: to an externally driven browser, Walmart shows a "robot or human?" check (PerimeterX, px-cloud.net) instead of its front page. Its figure measures that screen, not the shop.
Yahoo
From Colombia, yahoo.com opens espanol.yahoo.com. Many of the tracking names the other sites load belong to Yahoo (analytics.yahoo.com, pbs.yahoo.com): here they count as its own, and on the other sites they count as tracking.
What can be claimed
- Opening the front page of Amazon, eBay or Weather.com in Chrome with no blocker makes the machine talk to between 15 and 29 distinct advertising and tracking services; on ESPN and Yahoo, to 84 and 146.
- Amazon is an ad network as well as a shop: amazon-adsystem.com appeared on 4 of the six sites in this test and on 5 of the six news front pages measured the same day.
- None of the five measurable ones showed a consent notice before loading advertising and tracking.
What cannot be claimed
- That the machine went on to connect to those services, or that it sent anything: what is seen here is that the machine asked for the name. A connection almost always follows, but a browser also looks names up ahead of time and sometimes never uses them.
- What is sent when there is a connection, or what anyone read: GUARDIANA sees names, not content.
- That a site is "spying": these are documented advertising, measurement and delivery services, and each name is published.
- That the one loading least is the best, nor that a low figure means no tracking: they are names, not intentions.
Data and method
Full data: seis-webs-de-eeuu-2026-09-17.csv. Method: each site opened alone with site/src/radiografia/navegar.mjs (Chrome, empty profile, no scrolling, 20 s + 15 s); names taken from the machine's GUARDIANA ledger for each time window, this machine's queries only; only the ones the page asked for are counted. The tools are in the program's repository (site/src/radiografia/); anyone can repeat the test with Guardiana installed.
Brands named as the names of their owners. If you are the owner and something here is inaccurate, write to hola@guardianagroup.com: it is corrected, with the date.